the same way a lot of places went for Clinton early on. She was the best-known candidate. Obama was relatively unknown. A lot of people voted early for Clinton. Some people who would have voted for Obama when Edwards dropped out had already voted.

Nevertheless, Clinton won the state. I don't know what the vote would be today, I suspect that Obama would close the gap like he's done in every other state since Super Tuesday. No matter. Whoever is the Dem candidate will win Cali.

a lot of places went for Clinton later on. The fact is, late deciders in California broke for Clinton. I really have trouble with this notion that Obama would win every election if he only had enough time. I really think this stems from the fact that a lot of Obama supporters consider Hillary to somehow be an illegitimate candidate, as evidenced by the many references to her "low information" supporters. Many Obama people just can't fathom how a voter who knew what he or she was doing would prefer Hillary over him.

The notion that Hillary had some huge name recognition factor by Super Tuesday is unsupported by reality. How is it that he only had low name recognition in the states that he lost? There had been many debates, tons of news coverage and he had scored several impressive victories, not to mention the breathless media covergae of his rallies. There was speculation that Super Tuesday could be the end of Hillary, but now we're supposed to believe that Obama was some plucky underdog? I don't buy it.

Hillary started the campaign with much higher name recognition, and a big lead in the polls. But polls that far out are extremely unreliable, and Obama proved to be an attractive candidate and good campaigner. All credit to him for tightening up the polls, but many Obama supporters seem to think the polls are on some infinite trend line that would eventually lead to him getting 100 percent of the vote, if we only wait long enough.

One has to remember that there were other candidates in the ballot that received significant percentages because many people in CA vote by mail. Some of them may have voted before the candidates dropped out, or some may have voted on February 5 for other than HRC or Obama to make a statement.

Any way I just visited the Secretary of State website and calculated the difference between HRC and Obama to be 431500 votes, or about 5% of 9 million.

to the stats on election night. Many votes had to be counted since, as you say -- so they would not be in the election-night number, right? Can you link to/do the math for the updated numbers reported now?

And even after adding all third parties there are quite a few missing to get to 9m. Perhaps the state web site has not been updated yet or perhaps there were a significant numebr of people that didn't vote on any presidential primary.

Florida and Michigan will count and she will be ahead. You can pretend they don't exist but Iowa will not win the White House. Watch how the Super Delegates run from him now that we know a little more about some of his supporters. They don't want to be associated with corruption or racism .

Congratulations to Hillary Clinton for her considerable net delegate gain and her share of the big turnout.

(Although frankly the big turnout in the Dem primaries has had little to do with any Democrats, except maybe in their role as enablers of the Bushists, which both Clinton and Obama have been active in.)

I look at the RCP numbers I don't understand them:
they have Obama with about 2.1M votes and Clinton with about 2.5M (that's like 4.6 M only...)
Then they have Clinton with 203 delegates and Obama with 167.

...4.8 million of those people voted in the Democratic primary. The rest of the votes were from Republicans voting in the Repub primary and people who didn't in the primary but did vote on ballot initiatives.

It's not that astonishing. One eighth+ of all Americans live in California, more than 33 million (and the Census always undercounts us). Twenty percent of all American business is done in California and we produce about 25% of all tax revenue (and the Feds spend it and give us 15% back). If California was an independent country we'd be the sixth largest economy in the world--like France.

The Obama campaign was simply overwhelmed by the size of California both in population and geographically. They really didn't understand until about ten days before the election that there was more to the state than L.A. and S.F.

The Obama campaign only opened field offices in Sacramento and Fresno 10 days before the election. They didn't carry the Central Valley at all as they seemed to just find out about it right before the election. There's 1.3 million people in Sacramento County alone. There's one million people in Fresno County. The Obama folks seemed to be flabbergasted at the size of the job. They were fortunate that Edwards folded when he did or they wouldn't have won the North Coastal Counties by one and two percent.

In my city the Obama campaign opened an office behind a nail salon at a strip mall 12 miles from downtown 10 days before the election.

do that well in Los Angeles County. In fact Clinton won by a larger margin there than she won statewide. Los Angeles County made up over one quarter(29% to be more exact) of the Democratic voters in California, and they gave Clinton the county by approximately 178,000 votes(a 55-42 county margin, better than the 52-43 state margin). That's 40% of her statewide margin total.

with it's 500 registered voters. If Edwards had stayed in he wouldn't have won most of the North Coastal Counties. In Sonoma and Mendocino Counties the backwoods vote that had been Edwards' went for Obama.

VA, WI and WA would never go blue in the GE. And even if they did, they're all full of the latte-sipping, imported car-driving liberals we don't want in the Democratic party.

Now don't go getting all snarky and such. Everybody is pretty civil here although I bet there's a lot of teeth-grinding at the keyboards. Don't let this place become like Daily K (don't even want to "say" it). ;-)

Every possible pro-Clinton number scenario still gives Obama a lead (pop. vote, del count, state etc...). I'm not thrilled how this whole thing has turned out, but I'm not intentionally looking the other way.

Clinton beat Obama by approximately 430,000 votes, with slightly under 4,900,000 votes in the Democratic primary. The rest of the 9 million voters voted in the Republican primary, and the lesser party primaries.

Clinton picked up a net 427,184 votes in CA and 317,477 in New York. That's 744,661 votes. Pretty impressive for just two states.

There's just one thing. Obama netted 650,304 votes in Illinois. That almost singlehandedly wiped out Clinton's two biggest wins. The thing about Obama is that when he wins, he tends to win by wide margins.

Obama managed to net more votes in Georgia than Clinton did in New York. That's how she ended up here; when the contest isn't winner take all, you can't write off states or you'll lose delegates that can't be picked up later. Big margins are a killer.

Are they just polling equal nbrs of reg'd Dems and Repubs?
BEcause if so, and the Dem turnout in Nov buries the Repub by a factor of 2 or something, then that small margin for McCain gets completely blown away.

Does anyone have more info on this? I keep hoping that a lot of "close" polls are kind of moot because the Dem turnout is going to be historically huge...

How many Hillary supporters (except for bigots who would never vote for a black) in Ohio really would support John McCain or stay home because they will think that she was "cheated" of the nomination that was rightfully hers because the superdelegates didn't roll her way?

After Wisconsin etc, the alleged momentum should have resulted in a wipe out of Hillary. 20 to 30% losses. Obviously, the Democratic voters are not convinced. So, you can argue about delegates, a few votes here or there, recounts, but it's clear: There is no mandate for Obama. He cannot close the deal. I

f he is such a winner, why is he struggling to get Republicans to register as Democrats. You can call it whatever you want but now the party and the candidates have to do something to keep the Democratic momentum and they are not.

Obama's tactical mistake was taking the democratic base for granted and pandering to his "manufactured coalition".

Obama's tactical mistake was taking the democratic base for granted and pandering to his "manufactured coalition".

I think he firmly believes that he can go back and rebuild that burned bridge. It is laughable to think that he is doing all the stupid things Kerry did (and his supporters are helping the narrative by calling Clinton supporters "elderly women, low-information voters and the working poor" as if that's three strikes) and will still have a chance in the ge.

The biggest problem O will have if he gets the nom is that he will not have an energetic ex-president cheering him along. Clinton will probably find that he has pressing foundation matters in Africa when O wants him to stump for him. And I would not blame him a bit.

Obama had to destroy the Clinton's to create the "coalition" since it is based on Hillary hate and Clinton alleged racism. Along with destroying the Clinton's he and his supporters destroyed the Clinton voter.

Now, how will he and his coalition ask for support from the "racist" Hillary voters? How will he tell the "lizard brained" (Arianna's descriptor of Ohio and Texas voters) voters, the low information voters that he values them? How now will the Clinton supporter not be the okie doked bamboozler? Words...words.

...Clinton will ask for supporters from the "unimportant" states if she gets the nomination. Her camp has dismissed me in three different ways - I'm from Washington State, I drive a Prius, and I've been known to wear Birkenstocks - but come November, if she's the nominee I'd vote for her.